A system and method of searching images that uses a matrix of similarity scores has been described in, for instance, co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/619,133 entitled “System and Method for Searching Multimedia using Exemplar Images” filed by C. Podilchuk on Jan. 2, 2007, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference. Such a system typically returns a ranked list of images or video clips that match an image based search. The system may, for instance, return a list of images in order of similarity to a query or key-image.
The matrix used in such a search system typically contains similarity scores taken between every pair of a selected group of objects contained within an image or video library that may reside on, for instance, a database, digital video recorder or a computer network. One method used to measure the similarity between two images is the Pictorial or P-edit distance that is described in, for instance, co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/619,092 entitled “System and Method for Comparing Images using an Edit Distance” filed by C. Polilchuk on Jan. 2, 2007, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference. The P-edit distance has the advantage of being robust to variations in camera viewpoint and the pose of the objects in the images. The similarity matrix can be searched quickly using methods such as those disclosed in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/619,104 entitled “System and Method for Rapidly Searching a Database” filed by C. Podilchuk on Jan. 2, 2007, the contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference. These methods facilitate a fast image search of the image data that can use image data as at least part of the query. A separate similarity matrix may be formed for different domains such as sports, shopping, cars etc. These domain specific similarity matrices (DSM) may be exchanged among users and may be used to mix and match domains.
A shortcoming of an image search system that uses such generic domain similarity matrices is that the results do not incorporate a user's preferences or previous choices. A image search system capable of monitoring or incorporating a user's previous choices and preferences and using them to enhance the ranking of the returned images would be highly desirable as it would enable a user to more rapidly find the images or video that are of particular interest to the user.